Page 20 of Absent Remorse

He pointed to a couple of cameras pointed at the gym area. Simon cursed to himself.

“We’ll need copies of the footage to review.”

Parfitis shrugged. “I’ll send them over to you. Now, can I go?”

A part of Simon wanted to drag Parfitis in anyway, just for the way he’d lunged at Amber. He wanted to go through this place and find whatever the other man was hiding, whether that was drugs, steroids, or something else. He knew though that he had to focus on the murder case. He could leave that side of things to the local cops.

“All right,” Simon said. He uncuffed Parfitis. “Come on, Amber, we’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” she said. “But—”

“He’s not our guy,” Simon said. “Which means we need to look somewhere else.”

They were back to relying on Amber to solve the cube puzzle. Simon just hoped that she would be able to do it before someone else died.

The two of them headed outside together.

“You need to be more careful,” Simon said. “Throwing yourself in front of him like that, you could have been hurt.”

“I’ve been doing the hand-to-hand classes at the academy the same as everyone else,” Amber replied, a little defensively.

“But you’re not fully trained yet, and you still could have been hurt.” Simon didn’t want to risk the life of someone who was still technically a civilian if he didn’t have to. “Maybe I should drop you back at the office to keep working on the puzzle.”

Amber shook her head, though. “I don’t have to be there to keep trying things with it. Besides, I need more to go on if I’m going to get any closer to the answer. Some fragment of a clue. Something.”

Simon could really only think of one place to go next if they were going to get that kind of answer, but he wasn’t sure if he was comfortable taking Amber there. After a couple of seconds’ thought, he just came out and asked it.

“How do you feel about going with me to see the coroner?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Amber realized that she was holding her breath as she stepped into the coroner’s office. She looked down at the puzzle she was carrying, wondering for a moment if she shouldn’t be back in Simon’s office, working on it there, rather than going to the morgue like this.

“Are you sure you’re ok with this?” Simon asked.

Amber forced herself to nod. If she was going to be an FBI agent, then this was the kind of moment that she couldn’t back down from. Besides, there was a chance that something the coroner could tell them might lead to the solution to all of this.

“I’m fine,” Amber assured him. “Don’t worry about me.”

They headed into the coroner’s office, the outer room of which seemed bare and clinical, with a few chairs that sat around the edges of a waiting area. The coroner was already waiting for them as they walked in. He was an Asian-American man in his fifties, currently wearing an apron over surgical scrubs, peeling latex gloves from his hands.

“Come to see me so soon, Agent Phelps?” he said.

“Hello, Liu,” Simon said. “This is Amber Young, she’s working with me on this case.”

“And why is she carrying around some kind of cube?”

Amber decided that this was the moment to speak up for herself. “It may be the answer to this case. I’m trying to solve it.”

The coroner looked surprised by that, then doubtful. “If the answer’s in that cube, why do you need to be here?”

“Because any piece of information might help to unlock it all,” Simon said, “and because if we can get to the killer another way quicker, then we’ll take any hint we can get.”

The coroner nodded at that. “So, what do you need from me?”

“We need to hear everything you have on the three murders so far.”

Amber saw the coroner nod. “All right, although I’m not sure what I can tell you that’s new. Come through into the morgue. Don’t touch anything and don’t throw up.”

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